Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[merithyn]

There's another potential hazard if employers use it to filter out non-immunized job candidates. The whole idea generates a host of perverse incentives imho - plus it's not like antibody testing is bulletproof atm.

[merithyn]

Well to be fair wearing a mask doesn't protect the employees it protects the customers (well...and the employees from each other) so I guess that eatery wants to get its patrons sick? Nice customer service there.

That restaurant actually told the customers that if they want to wear masks, they can wait and come at a later time. They don't want customers wearing masks, either.

[Barrister]

Well to be fair wearing a mask doesn't protect the employees it protects the customers (well...and the employees from each other) so I guess that eatery wants to get its patrons sick? Nice customer service there.

That restaurant actually told the customers that if they want to wear masks, they can wait and come at a later time. They don't want customers wearing masks, either.

To be fair I can see some logistical problems with restaurant customers wearing masks...

[merithyn]

Because people are shitty at assessing risk.  What's the death rate for 20-somethings who catch Covid: 1 in 200?  1 in 1000?  It would still be really, really shitty if we suddenly lost  one in one thousand of our 20-somethings.  In particular if they're doing it just so they can go out to the beach or the bar.

So society gets to make the risk assessment for them?

It doesn't necessarily seem irrational to me: if someone hates life in quarantine, but enjoys life outside of quarantine, a 1/500 risk to get out of spending several months in quarantine may be completely rational. Even someone with 60 years of life expectancy remaining only has 720 months left to live.

Umm, yes?  Of course?

We make all kinds of risk assessments for people.  That's why we mandate seatbelts, regulate food and drugs, have speeding limits, etc.

A better analogy is "this is why we have drunk driving laws". You are not allowed to risk others because you've decided to risk your own life.

[merithyn]

One thing nice about the federal system is different states can run different experiments.

Unfortunately, viruses don't pay attention to state lines.

[merithyn]

Well to be fair wearing a mask doesn't protect the employees it protects the customers (well...and the employees from each other) so I guess that eatery wants to get its patrons sick? Nice customer service there.

That restaurant actually told the customers that if they want to wear masks, they can wait and come at a later time. They don't want customers wearing masks, either.

To be fair I can see some logistical problems with restaurant customers wearing masks...

Obviously, eating can't be done with a mask, but wearing one while dealing with servers and/or other staff isn't a big deal.

[katmai]

Well to be fair wearing a mask doesn't protect the employees it protects the customers (well...and the employees from each other) so I guess that eatery wants to get its patrons sick? Nice customer service there.

That restaurant actually told the customers that if they want to wear masks, they can wait and come at a later time. They don't want customers wearing masks, either.

To be fair I can see some logistical problems with restaurant customers wearing masks...

i wore one into and out of the restaurant last night. Servers, hosts and dj were all wearing masks. About half the customers seem to be like me and wearing one though.

[Valmy]

BB, I vigorously object to your willingness to confine people to their homes because you assess the risk for them to leave as excessive.

Is anybody actually confined to their homes? I thought you can go outside so long as you practice social distancing

[Valmy]

One thing nice about the federal system is different states can run different experiments.

I mean that is pretty counterproductive in a crisis. We didn't have 50 little Manhattan projects during WWII. Resources to fight this pandemic should be pooled and used to maximum effectiveness. We are destroying our economy this way. A proper response planned in January could potentially have saved us trillions of dollars and millions of jobs.

[Zanza]

Germany will move to a more localized approach. If one of its 401 administrative districts has more than 50 new infections per 100000 population within the last seven days, it will be locked down again. The test capacity in Germany was increased so that we can test about 120.000 person per day now and our healthcare system was not overburdened by the first wave.

Everything will be opened again in stages now considering hygiene rules, but each federal state has its own pace.

[jimmy olsen]

May is not looking great so far

[katmai]

I hope it changes, but nothing so far that points to numbers going down this month with up to 43 states opening up in some way shape or form. But for the dorseys of the world it's meh.

[Josquius]

Germany will move to a more localized approach. If one of its 401 administrative districts has more than 50 new infections per 100000 population within the last seven days, it will be locked down again. The test capacity in Germany was increased so that we can test about 120.000 person per day now and our healthcare system was not overburdened by the first wave.

Everything will be opened again in stages now considering hygiene rules, but each federal state has its own pace.

Sounds sensible. Ish.
Though I do wonder how it'd work for those living near borders. I live on the fringe of one borough, its streets flow into the neighbouring borough and its easy to miss the boundary, it isn't even marked on some streets. The nearest town centre to me is across that border. What if my job was there too?
It'll be hard to manage in cases like this.
I think a bigger scale might work better, logically grouping districts to follow people's typical travel patterns and urban area borders.

[Sheilbh]

It could be worse, the UK had 18 million transit* into our airports from January to mid March when our partial lockdown started, of those a grand total of 300 were quarantined, the large majority of those being on the four early evacuation flights out of Wuhan/China.

And remember UK airports still aren't closed, iirc there's 15-20,000 arriving a day, just that the airlines mainly closed the UK by their halting operations.

Still no temperature checks at UK airports, the 'government' is discussing the matter.

* the news report said 18million visitors, but I think the figure for total movements, plus large numbers of those wouldn't have been 'foreigners' but returning Brits as the crisis worsened.

Just thinking about the temperature check or other sort-of health scan for travel - especially given how air circulates on an airplane (as opposed to, say, train travel). Wouldn't that be more effective at the point of departure rather than arrival?

But that feels like we'd need a degree of international cooperation, so x country is happy that y country is scanning people as part of their departure procedures and they agree to common standards and to approve each other's flights? It won't catch everyone because there'll still be asymptomatic or people who aren't displaying a fever (this is one of the reason some EU countries have suggested temperature scanning probably isn't a useful measures - though I suspect their position on this will change), but those people wouldn't be caught by a check in the arrival airport either.

If you only identify someone when they arrive, then they will have had the entire duration of the flight to infect people on the plane and unless they were paid for seats in row A chances a big chunk of the rest of the plane who will have been breathing that person's air will already have de-boarded and gone through the scan?

[Zanza]

Germany will move to a more localized approach. If one of its 401 administrative districts has more than 50 new infections per 100000 population within the last seven days, it will be locked down again. The test capacity in Germany was increased so that we can test about 120.000 person per day now and our healthcare system was not overburdened by the first wave.

Everything will be opened again in stages now considering hygiene rules, but each federal state has its own pace.

Sounds sensible. Ish.
Though I do wonder how it'd work for those living near borders. I live on the fringe of one borough, its streets flow into the neighbouring borough and its easy to miss the boundary, it isn't even marked on some streets. The nearest town centre to me is across that border. What if my job was there too?
It'll be hard to manage in cases like this.
I think a bigger scale might work better, logically grouping districts to follow people's typical travel patterns and urban area borders.

There are districts with 153 cases per 10000 persons in Germany and other districts with 3 cases per 10000 persons. You cannot treat these the same.